Macro-scale decarbonisation of tourism: insights from Australia

Abstract

Governments and businesses have pledged to rapidly decarbonise tourism to achieve net-zero by 2050. While mitigation initiatives are implemented by individual businesses, destination managers need information to track sectoral mitigation progress and identify areas that require policy interventions. To support evidence-based tourism climate decision making, this study proposes a decomposition framework that assesses changes of tourism emissions based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) and International Energy Agency’s (IEA) net-zero macro-scale mitigation strategies. This framework has the capacity to track and benchmark tourism mitigation progress against milestones. A case study of Australia is used to demonstrate the approach, showing that Australia’s tourism system is not on track to net-zero, even though progress has been made on four out of six macro-scale indicators. Barriers to reaching net-zero are implied in continued growth of air transport and visitor spending, as well as the high carbon content of electricity used in the country. Results have global relevance, as they show that most countries will have to reduce emissions through a combination of government-led and destination-based strategies.